Hi! My name is Harley Matsil, the owner of Perfect Foods, and I have been in the health food industry for well over 30 years. Throughout the years I have witnessed countless miracles due to wheatgrass, and I would like to share one with you that is dear to my heart.

This story is dedicated to all the free spirited people out there that enrich the world every day. Everyone knows someone that has the effortless ability to illuminate the room with his or her presence and make those around them feel energized, enlivened, and inspired. With just a smile they dance through life, even through the hardest of times, and inspire you to dance as well. Well, that was my friend Dana Liberman.

Dana lived in Queens and worked at Integral Yoga, one of my very first accounts in Manhattan. He was a kind and lively man that held an event called the “Barefoot Boogie.” It was for hardworking individuals from all over the area to let their free spirits go on a Saturday night and dance the night away. He helped people everyday whether it was by providing them with nature’s health products or by giving them the time and place to leave the stresses of life behind and just enjoy.

No matter how spectacular a man, his story reads similar to most. He was diagnosed with bone cancer; he was far advanced and his time was almost up. When we heard the news, we began to deliver to him regularly: 3 trays of wheatgrass, 2 trays of sunflower sprouts, and 1 tray of buckwheat. I personally was delivering them for a long time, so it was about this time that I began to know and, most importantly, love him.

Week after week we would deliver to him, and every week Dana could hardly wait for the delivery to come. He swore that using a large quantity of wheatgrass fought his cancer. He said the cancer was still there, but he knew the wheatgrass was weakening it because the pain was heightened in the absence of it. He taught us one of the most valuable methods of drinking wheatgrass: have it multiple times throughout the day to reduce the most pain and result in the highest overall effectiveness. He claimed the periods of the day directly after he drank his wheatgrass were when he felt the least amount of pain. Later, my team and I came to realize the reason for that was because wheatgrass contains everything in its simplest form and when ingested goes directly into the bloodstream to be used immediately wherever it is needed. With a serious illness like bone cancer there is a lot to be fixed, so by replenishing your blood with wheatgrass regularly throughout the day you are giving your body the extra help it needs to keep fighting back. Dana would say that inevitably the pain always returned, but the wheatgrass kept him from feeling excruciating pain all day, every day.

Knowing that, we made Dana our priority. In fact, back then when we weren’t expert growers, we had to harvest a few crops just to get 2 or 3 pounds; they went to Dana. We never missed a delivery to him in 25 years. In fact, one day our car broke down in the middle of the Queens route (we always had pain-in-the-ass car troubles) and the next day I offered to personally deliver to Dana since I hadn’t seen him in years. I walked up his steps and to the foot of his door where two women stood deciding whether or not to let me in. Finally, one of them said, “ I think that’s the guy that saved Dana Liberman. He brought the wheatgrass.” It seems this is how a lot of my stories go.

Years after that, I was in Queens and I called him. He came outside to meet me, and with tears in his eyes he said wheatgrass had added 8 years to his father’s life and 20 years to his. Dana passed away not long after that, but his spirit will always remain with me.